The complete article is a good overview of Kucinich. mjh

Challenging Bush: Past Defeat and Personal Quest Shape Long-Shot Kucinich Bid

Dennis J. Kucinich was 33 when, having been drummed out of the Cleveland mayor’s office, he set out on what he calls his ”quest for meaning.” His city was in financial default — the embarrassment of the nation. His political career was in tatters, his bank account dangerously low. Not even the radio talk shows would hire him.

So he left the Rust Belt in the winter of 1979, headed west to California and, eventually, New Mexico, to write and think. There, in the austere beauty of the desert outside Santa Fe, he sought out a spiritual healer who, he says, led him on a path toward inner peace. “That,” Mr. Kucinich said, “is where I discovered that war is not inevitable.”

Now, after a stunning political comeback that culminated with his election to the House of Representatives in 1996, Mr. Kucinich — the boy mayor who was so bombastic he fired his police chief live on the 6 o’clock news — is seeking the White House, on a platform of “nonviolence as an organizing principle of society.” He wants to pull out of Iraq, sharply reduce the Pentagon budget and establish a cabinet-level Department of Peace.